582 Book Reviews

another, in excusing and justifying themselves, and in acting, that it seems
overwhelmingly likely that it captures an important part of what we are up to
in holding one another responsible. It is a book that demands a response. If
McKenna is right, the responses it provokes will constitute holding him re-
sponsible, and praiseworthy, for his achievement.

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian
Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel.
New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 144. H/b £15.99.
The problems with this book begin with the provocative subtitle, bleeding
into the introductory chapter and its polemical sequel. Nagel just assumes
from the start that modern Darwinism is committed to materialist reduc-
tionism. Then he attacks evolutionary theory, as it exists today, for being
reductionist. But metaphysical materialism and evolutionary theory are logic-
ally independent of eacb other, so the faults of the former do not transfer to
the latter. He thus attacks a straw man. Nagel persistently asserts that pro-
ponents of the science of evolution are materialists, calling this the 'orthodox
view'; but he gives no citations to actual biologists, footnoting only Steven
Weinberg, a physicist. However, even if they did in fact hold that metaphys-
ical position, the apparatus of Darwinian explanation is surely not committed
to it. Nagel just conflates the two questions throughout his book. There is
absolutely nothing to prevent an anti-reductionist about consciousness, cog-
nition and value from espousing Darwin's theory of the origin of species by
mutation and natural selection — and I strongly suspect that this is the ortho-
dox view (it is certainly my view). So far as I can see, even idealism and
Cartesian dualism are consistent with Darwinism.
Nagel thinks that scientists interested in the origin of life approach the
question with materialist assumptions: tbey seek a chemical explanation be-
cause tbey are diehard reductionists. But this is surely wrong: they look to
chemistry simply because chemicals were the only stuff around on earth
before early life (in the form of bacteria) arose. Later traits of organisms
might be irreducible (being genuinely emergent), but the origin of life
must have begun in non-life (unless we think life goes all the way back to
the big bang). Oddly, Nagel says nothing about the actual theories that have
been proposed, such as Cairn-Smith's crystal replication theory or the idea

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